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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

#962: Melonie Montgomery

Melonie Montgomery runs, maintains, and is the founder
of Fenestra Research,
a woo-laundering company that officially specializes in clinical trials for
alternative medicine practitioners and “nutritional” products”. It’s slogan “The
World Leader In Clinical Trials” seems to have been recently modified to “The World
Leader in Wellness Studies”, but still offers promoters of altmed “a range of
services to our clients including: Clinical Trials, Product Formulation,
Product Development, Product testing and more. Contact us to see how we can
help YOU.” This includes their “Optimal Wellness Test” (OWT), an “Anti-Aging & Wellness Analyzer” that is claimed “to identify and measure 34 clinical
markers in human physiology to a very high degree of accuracy, and conclude the
level of ‘wellness’ exhibited by individual clients with specific
recommendations for improving areas of concern.” According to themselves OWT “is
an analytical, mathematically based test that actually measures wellness in
every organ and system of the human body to within 0.02% accuracy. What we have
established is a simple, reproducible, mathematical based system to determine
if a natural product is resulting in your body mover closer to or farther from
Wellness parameters. […] The Optimal Wellness Analysis cannot be compared to
traditional lab testing devices because nothing available today tests for
wellness, they all test for disease. The typical patient in today’s world is
becoming more and more aware of the need to treat the cause rather than the
symptom, and that is precisely what the Optimal Wellness Test provides, while
eliminating all opinion and guess work!”

Precisely. As they pretty much explicitly says, Fenestra
doesn’t actually test altmed products in any meaningful sense of “testing”, but
for approximately $30,000 you can get some kind of document in support of your
product from a company that has “Research” in its name. They have provided “clinical
research” for such products as the quantum stirwand and GlaciaNova.
The results of the trials have not been published in peer reviewed journals.
Accoring to Lisa Tully the “measurement of resistivity, conductivity, surface
tension, specific gravity by Optimal Wellness Labs and the calculation for zeta
potential and anabolic-catabolic balance provide us with a look at the ability
of the nutrients to flow into the cell and the toxins and waste to flow out of
the cell,” but that is probably not correct, since it does not even begin to
make sense if the words are interpreted in accordance with what they mean.

Montgomery herself is a “healthcare professional with over
15 years of diversified management and marketing experience,” [no dusty
postdocs or research PhDs here] and according to her website she is a Master of Holistic Nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health,
BBA Human Resource Management from Trinity University Nursing Program, and expects PhD In Holistic Nutrition “in
early 2006”. Clayton College is the unaccredited diploma mill from which Gillian McKeith also purchased her degree. It seems to have shut down, however, so it is
unclear whether Montgomery ever obtained her “PhD” or not.

Diagnosis: I am not going to accuse anyone of fraud, so I
must conclude that Montgomery actually believes she is testing and providing
support for the various products she is claiming to test. Which is so
breathtaking that it beggars all belief.